1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus that is communicably connected, via a network, to a portable terminal carried by a user and a plurality of printing devices distributed and installed at various locations, receives a data print request from the portable terminal, and outputs data regarding the data print request to one of the printing devices, and a method therefor. More particularly, the present invention relates to a data output controller ideally suited for easily obtaining detailed information available on a network.
2. Description of Related Art
In recent years, information available on the Internet can be easily obtained from anywhere by using, for example, “i mode” (registered trade name) provided by NTT Mobile Communication Networks, Inc. (NTT DoCoMo).
However, although such a portable terminal enables information available on the Internet to be easily obtained from anywhere, the information displayed is considerably simpler than that displayed on a typical personal computer because the display of the portable terminal is inevitably designed to have a simple configuration for the purpose of achieving more compactness and reduced power consumption of the portable terminal. Hence, such a portable terminal does not provide information that fully satisfies a user thereof.
Therefore, a device can be provided in which a portable terminal and a printing device are combined so as to display rough information on the portable terminal, and to print detailed information on the printing device to thereby provide detailed information, while maintaining the compactness and reduced power consumption of the portable terminal. However, this device that combines the portable terminal and the printing device has to solve some technological problems.
For example, it is difficult to carry a printing device together with a portable terminal because of its big size, and therefore, it is conceivable to use a printing device that is typically installed at home or an office to print out detailed information. It is not possible, however, to easily obtain information from anywhere if a fixed particular printing device has to be used. To implement this idea, the printing device has to be made small enough to be portable, or an arrangement has to be made that allows an arbitrary printing device to be used. The concept of the former case is extremely difficult to realize with presently available technology, so that it is unrealistic. In the latter case, a driver dedicated to each type of printing device would be required, so that a portable terminal would have to incorporate drivers for all types of printing devices to be used. This is also unrealistic.